Where is your head?

Ever have a day where you just couldn't seem to get your head out of your work? There's a statue that stands outside the Ernest & Young building in LA that pretty much sums it up. Some days are better than others.

The Proper Thing to Do

I like to dress up. It’s very seldom that I don’t wear a coat and tie, which I believe is a piece of my past that continually pokes it head through my frame of reference. My maternal grandfather was English and a proper bloke. He came to the States at seventeen years old and never returned to Britain. He did, however keep a lot of England with him over the next six decades. To my knowledge he never came to the dinner table without his dinner jacket and tie. I remember asking him why after a long, dirty, tiring day farming why he would still change into his jacket before dinner. His answer was simple; “It is the proper thing to do.” And there you have it, some things are just the way they should be and others need help.

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Getting a haircut

I got a haircut last night. It has been some time since a haircut was a notable event for me. At one point in my maturing process it lost its qualification as an event and became a brief encounter resulting from a lack of content. My barber has lived with me for more than 40 years and in her spare time raised a family and kept me from wandering away. The brief encounter took place in my garage and was highlighted by only three brief words, “there you go.” Before I had a personal barber I would go to the “barber shop”, which has had some dramatic nomenclature revisions over the years, where I would listen to the pulse of the American republic. Conversation on local gossip, the day’s news stories, politics, always politics, were more the attraction of place than actually getting a haircut. Many a fervent, at times heated, discussions were held with one side under the sheet and the other with a pair of scissors in hand. And at the end of the “hairied” discussion the scissors were put away, the sheet was removed, you paid the bill, shook hands and parted friends. The process was an essential typology of the democratic process it was relevant and it was civil.

I’m not quite sure what has happen to either haircuts or civil discussion but I suspect we’ve moved from the barber shop to the garage. Referring to current character of political discussion Robert Bennett, former head of the Ohio Republican Party, in comments to the Ohio GOP Central and Executive Committee said, “We have to bring civility to the process; it's too important." That statement was intriguing enough for me to do some further investigation. I read the comments on the Bennett Columbus Dispatch article in the Sunday (Sept. 13) paper “Talking heads' lack of civility hurting GOP, ex-leader says”, by Mark Niquette. Frankly, I was surprised at the number of comments that spoke against the simple principal that civility has a value in politics as well as public life. Such phrases as “not a leader, muddying the message, conservatives (are) laying down…(in the face of) the evil Obama” I accept as examples of the exercise of free speech, the lack of content and the inherent lack of civility did nothing but strengthen Bennett’s position. But some cases free speech is used as an excuse to be abusive.

In Andrew Miller’s WOSU article “Sticker Shock Displays Lack of Civility” he recounts two episodes where passersby made abusive comments to him and his family concerning the Obama bumper sticker on his car. Miller says, “What I believe is lost on these people is that threatening someone's opportunity at life and liberty is not an act of free speech but an unprovoked attack. I'm not sure what happened to civility in our country but I beg our nation's leaders to help bring it back. Unfortunately, many of those leaders are the very people stoking these fires of division and disrespect.”

So what does all this mean to us? For twenty-two years Finance Fund has been an advocate for low-income people with an inherent disposition to have less access, less opportunity, and less tolerance from economies, politics, and moralists. It has not been benevolence or rampant altruism that has motivated us. It is the basic principal of civility. It has been basic respect for another human being and an attitude that respects ideas, situations, and dignity of another person. This is what is lost when civility exits. The lack of this basic social construct makes it much easier to categories people into “them” and “us” and it becomes much easier to demonize one and isolate the other. It becomes easy to deny access to housing because “they” are not responsible enough. Job opportunity for “them” should not be a priority because “they” will spend the money on drugs and drink. There are plenty of empty schools around why do we have to provide space to care for “their” children. “They” are too irresponsible to get a job anyway.

See, it’s easy. All that is necessary is to move from the barber shop into the garage. We can still get the haircut but without all that nasty responsibility to be civil.

Sukkot

Together we remember our wandering in our own wilderness and G-d's
ability to find us where we're at.


JR Klein

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